Blastodisc

I didn’t choose to be a caged hen on a factory farm, laying one egg per day. My steel enclosure is so small that I can’t even go through the motions of nesting. I’m weak, unsocialized, fearful; I’ve never seen an earthworm, much less a Sebright rooster. But this is my immutable fate, so I spend my long days praying. 

I have only one desire: that some of my stolen eggs will be used to make commercial mayonnaise. I understand that this is a humble condiment, totally unglamorous. I know that Americans say man-aze, flattening and smearing the French word, as with a butter knife. Or mayo, a plucky postwar coinage, like nuke or moonshot or frisbee. I’m aware that industrial mayo contains not a drop of olive oil, and that its culinary function is not so much to season as to lubricate. Gobs and strata of mayonnaise make canned tuna and lunch meats swallowable.

It’s all disgusting, if you think about it. But as a laying hen with less than two years to live, I envy mayo’s long shelf life. Supermarket eggs, though pasteurized, have to be consumed within a few weeks—whether they’re fried or deviled, or beaten into batter, or used to glaze pie crusts. Mayo-bound eggs, in contrast, are mixed with soybean or palm oil until they form a homogenous, shelf-stable emulsion. This non-Newtonian cream is then dispensed into sturdy plastic jars, which are bundled onto palettes and shipped throughout the country. It’s true that each jar is stamped with a “best by” date, but not everyone takes those dot-matrix numbers very seriously. It’s also true that, over months and years, the consistency of packaged mayo will eventually change. In a sealed jar, the oil and eggs will separate, and swirling bands, alternately watery and waxy, will appear. However, if the vessel remains uncontaminated, then the contents usually won’t go rancid. Which is why doomsday preppers often hoard sauces, alongside their MRE’s and batteries.

So that is what I pray for, and daydream about, in my solitary cell. That the egg I lay today—proteins I synthesize with my own ovaries—will end up in a mayonnaise jar, and that this jar will be bought by a survivalist. He will hide it underground, in a tidy, hygienic bunker, with bandages and dry beans and ammunition. There the jar will remain for many decades, through the coming apocalypse. Until one day, after the last air-raid siren has sounded—after the final execution, the nuclear meltdowns, the destruction of every slaughterhouse—one happy day, in a milder, friendlier climate, the bunker will be rediscovered. And someone grateful will open the jar that still contains traces of my genes. And she will taste mayonnaise with her finger. And I will be present at the picnic.